Richard Miller is an assistant professor of Ethnomusicology. He came to UNLV from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he earned his M.M. and Ph.D. degrees focusing on 15th-century Korean music and late 19th-century Japanese music and music education. Experienced in both historical and anthropological approaches, Richard has conducted fieldwork and archival research in the United States, Indonesia, China, and Japan with work that emphasizes the intersection of history, social science, political economy, music, and education. His current projects include the study of global popular music, the rise of Western-style music and music studies in East Asia, and issues of diversity in K-12 and higher education. He has published in numerous journals including Asian Music, Ethnomusicology, NewBooks Asia, Educational Review, Journal of Formative Design in Education, and the Review of Research in Education.

Although he sometimes describes himself as a “lapsed percussionist,” Richard is an accomplished performer, teacher, and leader of the gamelan music of Central Java, having studied with American, European, and Indonesian experts for more than 25 years. A seasoned teacher, he has taught Ethnomusicology and Music History courses, East Asian Studies courses, and Teacher Education courses at multiple universities in the United States and China. Among the topics he teaches at UNLV are undergraduate surveys (Classical through Romantic, 20th Century). special-topic courses (Music of the Black Atlantic, Global Asian Popular Culture, Music and Text), and graduate courses (Music of China, The Study of Musical Instruments, Music of East and Southeast Asia, 20th Century Experimental Music). He is developing two new courses for Spring 2021: Music, Race, and Class (an undergraduate special-topic course) and Music and Colonialism (for graduate students).